


Beneath a Cavernous Sky

by DansLesCieux (TheyCallMePoppy)



Series: Rise of the Titans [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Hermes runs godly UPS, Kronos hates demigods, Pre-The Second Titan War (Percy Jackson), Tartarus, The Elder Titans, Titans, but demi-titans are alright, mentioned Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), they aren't so bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23725972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheyCallMePoppy/pseuds/DansLesCieux
Summary: They were just dreams.Two nights a week, never the same one, and never with any warning. One second she'd be dozing on the splintery floor of Cabin 11 in a beat up sleeping bag, Butch's snores rattling in her ears, and the next she'd be staring up at the endless, hungry shadows of Tartarus, trailing after the eight-foot-tall, glowing men who introduced themselves as her family.She'd met the Elder Titans before she'd even really understood who they were. Learned from them how to read ancient Greek and how to swing a sword, the name of every constellation in the sky and the art of weaving light into flowers. They taught her about prophecy, and how to play the game of Fate. They taught her about themselves, about the Golden Age, about her race - the legacy of the Titans.The visits trickled off eventually, once the war began to brew. But she'll never forget their lessons.
Series: Rise of the Titans [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708915
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	1. Kronos

**Author's Note:**

> A series of snippets prologuing the events of the RotT universe. Chronology here covers Ria's timeline from the first few months of her time at Camp all the way through her first four years as a courier. Moments of connection between the Elder Titans banished to Tartarus and one of their descendants, who to them has come to represent the new generation of Titan-borns struggling with the discrimination and sometimes life-threatening prejudice they face under the reign of the Olympians.

Timestamp: 8/02/2009

“Can you teach me how to grow things?”

His eyes narrow on the tomato vine in his hands, calloused fingers tracking between the plump, green bobbles. “Grow ‘things?’”

She looks down at her lap, where she is fiddling with the soft, furry leaf of a tomato plant. “You know.” She gestures loosely in his direction and then around at the rest of the lamplit greenhouse. “This. Can you teach me?”

“I have to wonder-” He weaves the vine carefully back through the trellis meshwork and stands. Small clouds of brown dirt trickle off his palms as he brushes his hands together. “-where this sudden curiosity is coming from.”

“I got an orchid at the grocery store last week.”

He stills, and looks back at her over his shoulder, brows raised and lips thinned. She holds his gaze as best as she can, hazel eyes wide and shoulders squared, fingers turning the leaf over in her hands.

His gaze falls briefly to the leaf in her lap, his chest drawing in a long, weary sigh. He turns and strides off in the direction of his worktable in the corner. “No.”

She pushes up off of the bench she is sitting on, trailing him across the greenhouse. “Please?”

“In case it has not yet become clear, I am a _king_. I have no time to spare giving botany lessons to every half-mortal girl with a store-bought perennial.”

There are a lot of responses she could give to that; the first that comes to mind being that he’s _technically_ a king-in-exile. But mentioning that is (has been) the fastest way to get her booted out of his domain and cooly ignored for the next few weeks. So, not ideal. She settles on another truth instead: a little factoid Malcolm had dropped off-handedly into their last history lesson.

“You had time to teach the first humans.” She stops a few paces behind as he comes up to his worktable and plants his hands on the worn wood, her eyes tracking the tense line of his shoulders and the hunch of his tall, tall back. She says, “During the Golden Age. You taught them agriculture.”

He laughs, short and crackling bitter. Hands closing to fists on the desktop, he glares out of the glass wall before him, golden eyes warping the darkness on the other side. “A misguided decision I regret more deeply with every passing millenium.”

He reaches out then, picking up a pair of pruning shears. His thumb whispers over the well-sharpened edge, eyes following its movement contemplatively. What a mistake that was, teaching his craft to the mortal ingrates. Selfish, animalistic, putrid _worms_ that they all are, even back then - especially back then - it had seemed right, at the time. He had wanted to see them become something more than just wandering, drooling beasts ever-chasing their next meal, mucking for vittles along the sides of their walking paths. He had wanted to see them grow.

It was a mistake. A king’s mistake, admittedly, and it had cost him a king’s crown in the end.

“I’m already here twice a week,” she says, still close behind him. “We might as well.”

He spins the pruning shears in his hands and turns again, moving back over to the tomatoes. She follows him, thankfully silent, and watches as he comes to kneel before the trellis. With swift fingers and decisive cuts, he sets to pruning the suckers that split the vines, depositing them on the ground next to him. The heirlooms will come in well this year. A bit stifled, perhaps, but well enough.

He wasn’t initially taken with the idea of hydroponics. To trade in millenia of experience with cover crops and fire-fallow, mulch formulation and turning fodder, for artificial fluorescents and vat-feed, above-ground gardens and ventilated airflow - it seemed nearly sacrilegious. Until he and his people had been cast down into a sunless, sulfurous pit, that is. There was no choice now. And, at the very least, Coeus had truly outdone himself with the greenhouse designs. It is no easy feat, after all, growing tomatoes in hell.

“I want to start a garden,” she says, taking a seat on the ground next to him. Evidently, they’re not done discussing this. He hums, half-minded, as she picks up a basket nearby and starts to gather the discarded suckers into it. “Will said the infirmary always needs more aloe vera and wintergreen. Maybe some mint and parsley, too, for the kitchens to use.”

“And where would you be cultivating this veritable, lush garden?” he asks. Snips another stalk off and drops it in her basket. “As I recall, your current accommodations are rather crowded.”

“Well, yeah, I can’t keep it in Cabin 11. It’d be trampled or stolen before the day was out,” she says, frown carrying on her tone. “But Cabin 4 - that’s Demeter’s Cabin - offered to rent me a plot in their back gardens, behind their cabin. Only a few drachma a month.”

He feels the corner of his lips pull back, some modicum of a sneer, as he snips another sucker off just a hair too close to the stem. “How charitable of them.”

“It is, actually.” Her blond brows furrow, eyes watching the motion of his hands. “They don’t usually let kids outside their cabin use their garden. Too worried someone will steal something or poison the whole plot, if they do something wrong. Katie even offered to show me how to make the organic pest-repellant they use.”

“And I suppose she offered to teach you the rest: planting, fertilizing, maintenance and the like.” He scoffs, gold eyes flaring as the shadows twist and writhe beneath him.

She looks down at the basket of greens in her lap, sheepish. “Well, yeah.”

“And yet you come here, demanding to waste _my_ time.” He flips the shears in his hand again and stands, slitted eyes skimming the plant for splits he’s missed. “A foolish choice, really. Asking lessons of me when you’ve been freely given the chance to learn their _superior_ way.”

She stands too, hands grasping white-knuckled around the rim of the basket. “I don’t want to learn their way.” Her shoulders hunch suddenly, shrinking into herself as she drops her gaze to the suckers inside again. She murmurs, “I - I want to learn our way.”

He turns to her, finally, his eyes tracking across her features; the oval shape of her face and the curve of her jaw, the fine bridge of her nose, the gold flecks in her hazel eyes. She has some of Rhea in her face, or Theia perhaps; the Titaness ichor running thick and prominent through this half-mortal, even so many generations removed from his siblings. It makes him think of blood, and of posterity. Heritage. _Legacy_.

He takes the basket from her and drops the shears into her empty hands, starting off towards the front of the greenhouse to dump the suckers off into the compost box. “We’ll start with seedlings.”

She watches him go for a moment, eyes wide and hands cupped loosely around the pair of pruning shears. She glances down at them, studying the worn handles and well-sharpened blades, turning them over in her hands and weaving her fingers around the handles so that they sit right in her grasp. Then she looks up, smiling, wisps of gold and green light curling around the crown of her head.

She picks up her step, following after him.


	2. Hyperion

Timestamp: 12/12/2009

“Think first of the pieces.” He holds his hand palm up, spinning flecks of pink and green and gold twirling above his fingers. 

“The pieces,” she repeats, eyes narrowed as gold and green vines dance off her own cupped palms.

“Most focus only on the outside. They trace the profile, and mirror it.” 

He waves his hand, and the flecks suddenly come together, forming a sheet that suddenly fans out to gain 3D dimension. It’s a morning glory, she sees now. With circular, white petals tapered in pink and a deep green stem, dark droplet leaves trickling off of it. She sees it, clearly, knows what it is, but somehow it looks … off. Like a picture of the flower someone took and stretched out in all directions.

He flicks his pointer finger, and the flower seams down the middle, swinging open on imaginary hinges to let her see the inside. She expects to see the veins there, little trickles of sugar water, maybe the green, stringy tissue of the plant’s insides pulled apart. What she sees instead, however, is nothing.

“They make hollow things, that way.” 

He mends the flower together again and sends it fluttering to the grass before them. There, he conjures a whole bush of morning glories; the same round, white-pink flowers and green leaves, yet somehow, inexplicably, more. Fuller and fluffier with more dimension, more shadow, more _something_. She can’t even really put her finger on it, but she knows this at least; putting his hollow flower side-by-side with these new ones, she can pick it out for a fake without trying, even if she’s not sure why. 

“It can be good, but never the best.” He huffs, chin tipping up, and adds, “And we are _always_ the best.”

“Ok,” she says, blinking as the bush of morning glories dissipates into thin air. “Ok, so you make the pieces.”

A new morning glory is conjured before her, splitting into pieces in front of her eyes: five round, white leaves edged in pink and crimped at the ends, a cylindrical stem that starts a dark green at the base and finishes thinner and lighter at the top, three offshoot leaves with two or three thinly veined leaflets each, fuzzy around their faces and swaying with the breeze as the whole, disassembled construct rotates slowly in the air.

“Pieces, each as real and detailed as the whole.” He lifts his hand, fingers closing slowly into a fist. “Then you bring them together.”

The components assemble: leaves attaching to stem and stem attaching to sepals, to the receptacle, petals sewn in an imperfect circle around the ovule as the anthers shudder and rise up, burnt orange and swaying. She sees the lopsided curl of the petal edges as it rotates, the rumpledness of the base leaves. The leaflets roll in a smooth wave as an imaginary wind brushes over them, a perfect motion.

“See how the petals curl, the leaf shoots meeting the base at rounded edges. These things must not be overlooked. You must give the light layers. Texture. _Life_.” He guides his hand towards her, holding the flower out. “This is our craft, little beam. We are creators - building with light, not matter.”

She holds her own conjuring up before his, eyes squinting as she tries to focus on it. Petals first, a bit crinkly, starting magenta at the edges and dissolving into pure white light particles as it reaches up. She tries to firm the top edges, to turn the petals over and round off their sides, but they seem to be wriggling out from beneath her will, their white sheen blushing pink to match the frustrated flush of her cheeks.

Her light isn’t moving like his; not forming and compacting in distinct shapes, but just sort of dancing, carefree. Her aura has always been a reflection of her emotions, so trying to tame it this way - to make it into something other than what it wants to be, something succinct and concrete (in the way emotions never are) feels strange. Counterintuitive.

She keeps trying though; staring at the morning glory he holds patiently out to her while she plucks and curls her fingers, molding the light like wet clay in her hands. She’s done tricks like this before, coaxing the light into little, five-tipped golden stars or the occasional, blurry outline of a pegasus, to entertain her friends at Camp. Never something this specific, this detailed, though. 

But there’s an artist in her yet, and she tries to treat it like when she’s sketching out a glass sculpture: imagining the wrinkled crimp of the petal edges, and the microscopic hairs on the leaflets, the fuzzy pollen on the anthers and the crinkle of the sepals. Small details, imperfect, specific, that make the pieces come to life. And, somehow, the light in her hands seems to respond.

She meets his glowing, golden eyes for a moment, and he tips his head. So she cups her palms together, pulling the pieces in one by one: leaflets to leaf shoots, shoots to stem, stem to sepals, sepals to flower, petals to flower, all assembling. Vibrating with the concentrated tremor of her hands, overlayed loosely, parts clipping into and out of one another like a badly rendered animation.

It’s not perfect (not even _good_ ) by any stretch, but it’s at least something. She keeps the “flower” floating in the air above her palms, frowning with concentration. It feels like juggling almost - the mental effort she’s making to keep everything in focus, in place, to keep everything looking _real_.

“There’s so much to manage,” she says. Even speaking causes the petals to blur out for a moment, before coming back into sharp (nearly too sharp) focus.

“As with swordsmanship, with riding, with any craft. In the beginning, all you may focus on is the balance of your stance, or the gait of the steed beneath you. The push of your heel or the tension of the bowstring. Pieces. With practice, however-” He splays his fingers, creating a whole bouquet of morning glories that he clasps in his hand, looking real as any flowers she’s ever seen. “-a collage becomes a picture. Pieces become the whole. It will become innate to you - crafting a flower as a flower, the sum of its parts. It takes only time.”

“And practice,” she says, sighing. She lets her flower dissipate, shoulders slumping as a shawl of soft blue light settles around her shoulders.

He chuckles, allowing his own bouquet to disperse. “Your uncle took decades to master the craft.” 

She looks up to him, blond brows raised above deep, hazel eyes. “He did?”

“Hadn’t the patience for it.” He strokes his golden beard, lips quirked up as their little corner seems to grow a bit brighter around them. “Always trying to craft the grandest of illusions all at once: towering statues all in gold and legendary beasts he’d heard described in poems. Conjurings far beyond his imagination, let alone his prowess. They were an eyesore, on the rare days that they worked, and he would more often give in and run off to other affairs before anything of substance could take shape.”

She tries to imagine it: a young Helios (her age, with blond hair and blazing, gold eyes) squinting and straining over the blurry visage of a half-formed sea monster, wiggling his fingers awkwardly like her as the light writhes and shudders out of his grasp. Standing there, practicing and failing, for hours on end, until he finally gives up with grit-toothed scream and stomps off to go hang out his satyr friends or bother his sisters. 

It makes her laugh just thinking of it; the light over her shoulders shifting to a bright shade of gold.

“Had much of my fire in him, that boy!” He laughs too, deep and bellowing. Pounds a fist into his chest, above his heart, as his skin erupts in a golden blaze so bright that she has to turn away from him. 

She waits until his chuckles taper off, until she can’t hear the roar of his flames anymore, to cautiously peek back in his direction. His aura has dimmed significantly, skin now a burnished gold rather than the aureate blaze of before, and his gaze is distant, hazy. The shadows of Tartarus start to creep in around them.

“Too much of it, your grandmother would say,” he admits, softly. His eyes move up, finding the cavernous darkness of the ground above their heads. “Though she doted on him greatly.”

He waves his hand, and the air above them paints over with sky. Blues and pinks and purples, greens and golds, a blazing crimson, fading and smoothing into one another as dawn meets day meets dusk. A golden, blazing sun rises to the east while a silvery, cratered moon fades into the west, the glow of daytime and the stars of the nightsky between them. She traces the sky with wet, hazel eyes, breath caught in her chest.

He stares up with her, half-lidded eyes simmering softly as they track the space between the sun and moon. “My memory is too faded to conjure their visages properly. I have only pieces now: the curl of his blond hair, the moonstone of her eyes, the white of his grin and the whisper of her smile. My blazing ray. My moonflower.”

She feels a coolness on her hand and looks down. His aura has extinguished, nothing but the olive of his skin and the gold of his eyes left behind, and the darkness is moving in on them; shadows brushing icey against her skin as they press and close in. She lifts her hands without thought, draping them both in a cloak of bright, golden light that sends the shadows skittering back with a soft hiss.

The sky light shifts in her periphery, and she looks up. 

It’s a soft pink now, layered in strokes of red and gold, streaks of green and purple breaking on the horizon where the sun still waits to rise. Dawn.

Glancing over, she finds him looking down at her, his eyes rippling like flames, aura a soft, golden glow pulsing off his skin. He reaches out, gently setting one of his huge, bronze hands on her shoulders, and she can feel the callous of his palm, the simmering warmth that exhumes from him. 

He says, “And my morning light.”

She shifts on her seat, lip caught between her teeth while something painful twinges in her chest. “I’m not-”

“You have much of her in you, little beam.” He smiles, genuine and warm in a way she has never seen from him before. The sky brightens above. “I am grateful to be able to see my daughter’s face once again.”

Gods. She brings a hand up, swiping the backs of her knuckles across her eyes.

He pulls his hand back, the warmth lingering behind in her shoulder even moments after. She watches as he waves his hand and the sky over them fades out to cavernous rock once more. She misses the sight already, and it makes her wonder just how much _he_ must miss it, too.

“Now then,” he says, standing. He claps his hands together, huge biceps flexing as his aura erupts in flames again. He holds up a palm for her to see, bending the light there effortlessly into another morning glory. “To practice. I will expect you to have mastered conjuring such a simple illusion by our next visit.”

Groaning, she pushes herself onto her feet beside him. “I don’t know if-”

“You are of my blood, of the _Hyperionides_ , descended from Light and the Flames themselves.” He crosses his arms as the illusion dispels, chin raised and eyes narrowed down at her. “We are unwavering. We always know.”

“I’m also half mortal, Grandfather,” she says, a token exasperated.

“An unfortunate blight for which you will be forgiven.” Eyes burning crimson, he says, “Failure, however, will not.”

She wants to roll her eyes, wants to snark back something about how they’re standing in Tartarus right now after what one could consider to be a _historically monumental_ failure on his part, but she’s not that mean. And there’s no point in it anyway. After meeting her grandfather, she’d been both surprised and not to learn that her stubborn streak is, apparently, genetic. There’s really no arguing with the Titan of Light.

So she cups her palms together, huffing out a little breath as she starts to imagine white-pink petals and deep green stems and leaves. No offense to her uncle, but she hopes she’ll be able to at least conjure her grandfather a bush of morning glories _before_ she hits thirty.

With a little hard work, some patience and coaching - she hopes, someday, she can show him the dawn again.


	3. Krios

Timestamp: 2/08/2010

“And over there?”

“Taurus. Right?”

“Yes, but beyond, higher.” He takes her much smaller hand and gently guides it up, above the great bull’s horns, further and back, until her pointer finger lands on a cluster of stars. The stars seem to glow brighter with the attention, shimmering a white, hot gold.

“That’s …” She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it. “Cassiopeia?”

He glances at her in his periphery, a single, dark eyebrow raised. “Are we near Polaris?”

“No,” she murmurs, frown deepening. She peers up at the cluster, squinting slightly as the dim starlight seems to warp and twist before her eyes. “That’s … um, Auriga?”

“He is higher, to the west,” he says, shifting her hand again. The constellation lights up as soon as her pointer finger lands on it, lines of soft blue light tracing patterns between the stars to illustrate the great charioteer dashing across the sky.

“Well, he _could_ be lower, to the east,” she says, waving her hand. 

The stars shift suddenly, trickling like marbles in a freefall up the northern sky. Auriga races down the length of Taurus’ back, dodging past the cluster of unnamed stars as they slip past him to take his place at the tip of the bull’s horns, spinning and twirling in merry circles there.

She hears him chuckling next to her, soft and rumbling, and ducks her head to hide the little smile that touches her lips. 

“I cannot imagine the outcry there would have been, had I treated the stars so fickly during my reign.” He shakes his head, the laughter retreated to just his voice now. “I would have had the seafarers sailing in circles for the rest of their days.”

“Alright,” she sighs, sweeping her hand again. The stars shift back to their original stations, the constellation of Auriga fading some as the unnamed cluster glows brighter than ever. She eyes them, still seeming at a loss. “Can I have a hint?”

He hums, looking thoughtfully up at the cluster as it shines. He pulls a bent knee up to his chest and links his fingers together, resting them on his kneecap and his chin over top that. “They are your second cousins.”

The low hum she makes sounds nearly distressed. “So is half the Greek pantheon! That’s not a hint.” He gives her a little smile, silent. She glances back to the star cluster, lips turning down in a pout as curls of indigo and light grey flutter off her. Finally, she says, “I give up.”

“The Pleiades.” Being named, the stars give off a bright pulse of white light. “The Seven Sisters.”

“Seven sisters?” she says, eyes squinting harder. “But there are nine up there.”

“Two of them are their parents, Atlas and Pleiones.”

Brows furrowed, she says, “And they’re … riding on Taurus’ back?” 

“No,” he says, an amused tilt to his smile. “Just nearby. Dancing, presumably.” The smile slips from his lips as his eyes find the star cluster again. Wistful, he says, “They loved to dance.”

Overhead, the stars all seem to dim. She quickly brings a hand up and splays her fingers, streaking a golden asteroid across the sky and alighting all the stars it passes. The movement catches his eye, the tense set of his shoulders falling lax as his gaze follows it over the northern skyway. By the time it passes out of sight to the east, the stars are glowing brightly once more, and he seems to hold himself up straighter.

He lifts a hand and points, this time to a point above the Pleiades. “And the next one?”

She tilts her head, contemplating the spattering of soft-glowing asters. “That’s …” She waves her hand, lines tracing themselves out in the sky to connect the outline of the hero. Fingers curling tentatively back into her palm, she says quietly, “Perseus.”

“Son of Zeus, King of Argos and Mycenae, Slayer of the Gorgon,” he says, dark eyes narrowed on the constellation.

A pause falls, nothing but silence and galaxy to bridge the space between them as they look up. Her hazel eyes seem to glow nearly golden, reflecting the starlight of the nebulae overhead in the same way his dark blue eyes always carry the glimmer of the cosmos within them. She keeps her gaze tracing along the outline of Perseus, lips creased in a deep, heavy frown.

“I … I heard that …” Unease pulses in sickly green and violet waves off of her. She pulls her knees up to her chest, saying, “I heard that Medusa moved to her island so that no one would have to see her. So that she wouldn’t _hurt_ anyone, and she could live in peace.”

He doesn’t speak, but the shadows beneath him seem to quiver.

“I’ve heard some versions of the myth where Medusa didn’t fall in love with Poseidon at all. Some people say that she was raped.” She winces, making the stars (aside from Perseus) wink out for a second above them. They come back on a moment later, shining dimly. “She was a priestess of Athena. She dedicated her whole _life_ to Athena. Even if she did fall in love with Poseidon, she would never - Not in Athena’s temple, y’know? I just can’t imagine it.”

“Neither can I,” he says darkly. He’s glaring up at Perseus’ constellation now, and the stars _burn_ under his gaze. 

It hits her suddenly; that all of these stars and constellations, the mythos of the galaxy, are all things he never witnessed firsthand either. The heroes and monsters and maidens they’ve traced in the sky together, every story swapped so far - they all happened after the Titanomachy. After he was sent down to Tartarus. Where did he even hear the tales they’ve been discussing so far, about the constellations? From the monsters banished down here with them?

She wonders what it would have felt like: having to hear, secondhand, about the new stories painted across a starry sky you were once supposed to rule. A sky you would never get to see again.

She reaches out blindly, hand finding his much larger one and slotting their fingers together. She lifts their hands as one, raising them to the sky above as the stars wipe out; a clean, night blue canvas, tinged violet and gold around the edges with the last vestiges of dusk. Coaxing his pointer finger out alongside hers, she points them up to the top of the sky overhead, lighting up a single, pure white star. Polaris, the North Star.

“Show me what they looked like,” she says, eyes locked upwards. “The stars and constellations, the last time you saw them.”

He gives her an owlish blink, the shadows under him temporarily receding. Looking up to the North Star above, something within him seems to ease, slipping out of him in a long, slow breath. A gentle smile claims his lips, making the stars within his eyes glow. 

He gives her hand a gentle squeeze, and begins to paint the stars.


	4. Iapetus

Timestamp: 4/12/2011

“Hands up. Stay centered.”

A strike, dodged, and they circle. The white cut of his grin flashes at her, playful swagger in his stance, striding low and balanced as they pass round again.

He makes another lunge, and she sidesteps, whipping her sword in a wide arc at his shoulders. He meets it, easily, binding the strongs of their swords and _shoving_ her backwards bodily. 

She falls back, sword clattering at her feet, the tip of his blade centered on her chest before she can even think to move for it. She leans back on her hands, panting, blond hair plastered to her forehead from the sweat dripping down her face.

“Y-you know …” She gasps in a couple of deep, rasping breaths. Stares up at him from the ground through wide, hazel eyes, brows furrowed. “Eight feet … tall … ‘s not re-really … _fair_.” 

He flips the hilt in his hand, sword angled back towards his side while he holds his other hand out to her. “I had half a mind to let you try your hand against my twenty-foot form.”

She takes his hand, black spots dancing in front of her eyes as he pulls her up. She steadies herself on her feet, the heel of her palm pressing against her temple as she focuses on the pull of air into her lungs.

“Deep, slow breaths.” His hand settles on top of her head, large fingers ruffling her blond hair lightly. “Your breathing must be under control, your pulse high and steady.”

She nods, hands on her hips and back going straight as she forces her gasps to slow. She can feel the beat of her pulse in her ears as the frantic breaths come down and her heartbeat stays up. Adrenaline. It tingles in her fingertips, flushes in her cheeks, turns the sweat on her face and arms and chest to a cool trickle off her skin that makes her shudder.

His hand drops off her head, and she opens her eyes to see him kneeling down to pick up her practice sword. He holds it up to her there with both hands, steel grey eyes bright over his grin. “And again.”

She takes the blade from him with a groan, shifting back into close left guard. She takes a step back, waiting for him to set his own guard (matching hers) before charging.

Her biceps are trembling with the strain, knees wobbly underneath her, but she fights through it with determination. They’ve been at it for almost an hour, and, everytime she feels like she’s finding her pace, he always seems to come at her harder. It’s good practice, without a doubt. The best she’d ever had, actually - so used to only receiving the passing comment from a distracted Arena instructor in the madness that is Cabin 11’s weapons training sessions, her form and fitness is flourishing under his undivided attention and to-the-point critiques. But she’s _exhausted_. Frustrated from gaining no ground. Embarrassed by how she’s falling apart from fatigue and he still looks easy-going as ever. 

It doesn’t take but another three minutes of sparring before he binds their blades again. He goes for a counter this time, sword singing as the Celestial bronze slides against hers, point facing her chest and thrusting _forward_ -

Plunging into her ribcage as she lets out a choke. 

But he only smirks. “A fair try.” One hand drops from his hilt, reaching out into the empty space to her left, where his fingers close around an invisible form there. “But remember your opponent - I can sense true pain.”

A flex of his forearm, and he sends her to the ground. The illusion dispels: her blade-pierced visage dissolving into thin air as she topples to the ground at his side, sword falling with her but thankfully still in hand this time. 

He steps in to strike her there, meeting her frantic parry and rounding his blade back quickly to hover centered over her chest as before. 

She lets her arms collapse underneath her, falling back to lie on the ground and groaning up to the caverns above. She’s already out of breath again, and the hasty defeat tastes like bile on her tongue. Simmering curls of dark violet light coil around her shoulders, burnished orange wriggling in waves beneath her to the fast beat of her pulse.

He turns his sword back and holds out his hand to take.

To the ceiling above, she announces, “I can’t.”

He prods her calf with the steel toe of his boot. “You must.”

“No offense, Granduncle, but why do we always have to train? When I hang out with the others, we just chat and swap stories.” She waves her free hand in the air. “Talk about my cousins, or myths, or the stars. Why can’t we do _that_ for once?”

Silence follows. She blinks up at the ceiling, propping herself up onto trembling elbows to look at him.

He’s standing by her feet and looking down at her, the steel in his eyes so shaded now that they look nearly black. She can see the shadows shuddering underneath his boots, and the chalk white of his knuckles around his sword hilt. The tight, thin line his lips press into as he stares down at her.

“When you are backed into a corner, overrun by monsters and outnumbered five to one, will talking about the stars save you?” he asks, tone flat, dead.

The light of her aura snuffs out, gone with the cool wave of ice that sweeps her body.

“When your sword is shattered to pieces on the ground before you; the red of your pegasus’s fresh-letted blood seeping in through the soles of your shoes; when you can hear the screams of your companions being slaughtered nearby, an impenetrable wall of claws and teeth and bronze between you-” He lets the point of the sword press to her chest. “-will the stars save you then?”

“No,” she whispers, hazel eyes wide as they peer up at him. Slowly, gently, she pushes the tip of his sword away from her chest with the flat of her palm. She reaches up to him.

His free hand surges out, clasping around her own and pulling her onto her feet. He steps back while she finds her balance, watching her hunch over to fight off the nausea.

He sheathes his sword in one fluid motion. “You are mortal.”

“I know,” she heaves, breathless.

He glares at her, stern and steel in his eyes. “I understand mortality better than any of my kin, Titans _or_ gods. I have witnessed death, and what it does to heroes. To those around them. It was once my duty to know as much.”

And she drops her gaze to the ground at her feet, saying softer now, “I know.”

“You are traveling the world, unaided, unsupervised. No magic to protect you, no totems to mask your scent, not even a companion to watch your back,” he says, fingers drumming down the hilt of his sword. “An experienced demigod could be expected to last no more than a year or so in such conditions-” His eyes narrow on her, lips curled down at the edges. “-and you are neither experienced, nor half god.”

She squares her shoulders. “I’m half Titan.”

“A daughter of dawn who wields a sword like a club, no warskills or crafts to her name aside from some clever tricks of light. Listen to me, Ria,” he says, stepping towards her. 

Standing eight feet tall and built like a warrior, he towers over her without even trying, and she can feel the heat of her overworked body evaporating in the vacuum he carries with him. Nevertheless, she stands taller and tries to meet his gaze, looking up and up as he comes upon her.

“You are an untrained youngling with the blood of the Titans rushing through your veins and no one else around to protect you.” One more step, and he’s right before her, over her, eyes searing into her own. “You are _easy prey_ , and they - monsters, Titans-bane, giants and gods alike - will be able to _smell it_ on you.”

A frown breaks over his face, sudden and sorrowful to match the nimbus of his eyes. “You must be careful.” He turns on his heel, striding a circle away from her as he unsheathes his sword. He takes up stance again, middle guard, facing her. “You must train.”

“Alright,” she says, setting her guard back left. She plants her feet and widens her stance, huffing to catch her breath as the cool-shivers ripple through her. “Alright.”

He strikes down, high-handed, and she skips to the side, parrying his blade away. 

They breathe, and circle again.


	5. Coeus

Timestamp: 6/25/2012

“‘ _For this is the way men’s life runs on, bringing trouble upon trouble; since all that are born of mortal womb are slaves by necessity to Fate the_ ’-” She pauses, looking up from the little, leather book in her hand. Her hazel eyes seem to glow in the soft light of the golden orbs which float and bob playfully in the air around them. “Um, should I stop?”

Coeus flicks his wrist, gaze still gone far-off into the distance. “What is she saying to him?”

She glances back down to the book. “Well, she's telling him to forget about his anger. Because our fate was already decided when the Moirai first drew our strings at birth. Being slaves to Fate is in our nature.”

“‘Our’ nature?”

“Mortal nature.”

He says nothing for a while, thoughtful gaze turned up to the starless night sky above. 

“Have you read Aeschylus?”

She sighs, shutting the book and laying it across her knee. “You know I haven’t.”

“What do you know of the youth of Achilles?” he asks, sounding tired beyond all time.

“I-” She pauses, eyes rolled up thoughtfully. “I remember his mother trying to boil him. Or - burn him. To see if he was immortal, or to _make_ him immortal. She was angry at her husband. She didn’t love him; didn’t want their child to be mortal like him.”

“And how, then, did they come to be married?” 

“I … I think Zeus arranged it?” The furrow of her brow deepens, the orbs of light around them shifting to a contemplative blue.

“Why did he do that?”

She thinks it over for a moment, lips pursed, and then shakes her head. “I don’t remember.”

He tips his chin, considering her answers. He switches tactics: “Then speak to me of your second cousin, Pallas Athena.”

“The goddess of wisdom,” she says. Then, less certainly, “What about her?”

“Tell me the story of her birth.”

“Alright,” she says, leaning back on her hands, fingers threading through the dewy grass. “She was born to Zeus. The same way she has her own demigod children: a thought given form, given _life_. She manifested in his head sometime after he married Hera - the worst headache of his immortal life - so Hephaestus cracked his head open with a hammer and … y’know, out she popped. Armor and all.”

“Hmm,” he murmurs, voice wispy as smoke. “Is that so?” His cold blue eyes drift over to her in his periphery, his lips tugged into a thin purse. Seems he’s disappointed with her answer.

Frowning, she gives it a moment of consideration, racking her brain for any detail she’s missed or mixed up. Honestly, these myths all bleed together in her head, too contradictory and interwoven for her to keep straight. That’s what she has Beta for, after all. Speaking of which. 

She looks up, hazel eyes glimmering in the lowlight as her fingers curl to fists in the grass. “I … There was another version. One that Beta told me.”

He inclines his head, silent. 

So she sits up, hands folding in her lap, and takes a deep breath. Tries again: “He said that Zeus fell in love with Metis, one of the Oceanids.” She throws a quick glance over to his face, but his expression is a blank slate as always. She goes on, “That there was a prophecy foretold - by Prometheus or Themis or whoever, I think it changes with the telling - that said that a son born from Metis and Zeus would … would someday grow up to overthrow him.

“Zeus obviously wanted to avoid that, but Metis was already pregnant by the time he found out about the prophecy, so he-” She sets the book onto the ground next to her, crossing her legs and pulling her knees up to her chest as she wraps her arms around them. “He turned her into a fly. And swallowed her.” A sliver of a smile touches her lips, sad and bitter in equal parts. “Joke’s on him though - Metis gave birth to Athena inside him anyway.”

Looking up to her granduncle, she hastily concludes, “And then it’s the same as the other version: headache, hammer, brand new warrior baby Athena.”

“And Metis?” he asks, stroking the knuckles of one hand with the fingertips of the other. His gaze is locked on her, blue so dark it almost melts into the shadows that cloak around his shoulders. “What of her fate?”

Her brows drop low on her forehead. “I … guess she’s still in there? Inside Zeus?”

“And her son?”

Blinking owlishly, she asks, “What son?”

“The one she was destined to birth. The usurper,” he says, and the night sky seems to grow a shade darker around them.

“I, um, I guess he was never born. Zeus swallowed Metis before they ever conceived him, right?”

“Then what of the prophecy?” he asks, cold and clipped, letting the word ring in the air between them. 

After years of conversing with Coeus, she’s learned that he likes to navigate conversations in what Beta would call the “Socratic” way, circling round and round with questions she has to answer (doing an impressive job of making her feel simultaneously stupid and exasperated) until they finally, _finally_ arrive to the point he’s been trying to make all along. From his tone of voice, she has a feeling that, whatever that point may be here, they’re just now reaching it.

She gives the answer due consideration, saying carefully, “It was never fulfilled.”

“Yet how can that be?” he asks, brows furrowing. The shadows writhe over his shoulders, slipping down the steel plate of his chest armor and pooling in his lap. “Is Zeus not subject to the will of Fate, just as any other?”

Confused, she says, “I think he is.”

“Then how is it the usurper was never born? Zeus swallowed the fly; he averted the prophecy.”

“I-” She glances down to the shadows crawling across the ground, dissolving the golden orbs in the air to instead burn her aura brighter when they come a little too close. “I guess maybe he isn’t then. Subject to Fate, like the rest of us. Maybe he gets to cheat a little, because he’s king.”

“Yes.”

A breeze blows past them, harsh and chilly, and she winces into it. Head ducking, eyes low, she glances over in his direction, chilled to find his eyes cutting into her.

“Mark these words, dawn child, and carry them with you always.” He leans forward, shadows shading his face until she can’t see anything but the deep, dark blue of his eyes, wide and eternal as the starless night sky. “From the earliest days of his rule, Zeus has been depicted as holding the scales of Fate, the Moirai weaving at his feet. It is true that all are subject to the will of Fate, yet make no mistake - the king of Olympus rules over _all_ domains, and the Fates serve his will as any other.”

His eyes drift down to the book on the ground next to her. He picks it up and sits back, staring down at it in his lap as his thin, silvery fingers glide over the leather cover. “Zeus is the king of Olympus now, and I would caution you of a single, great truth which shapes your fate, and indeed all others’-”

He looks up then, eyes darkened to pitch black. “A king will pay any price, to see that his reign never ends.”


	6. Oceanus (and Tethys)

Timestamp: 9/12/2013

She holds the envelope out with a grin. “Delivery.”

He takes it from her, an amused little tilt to his lips. “Should I tip you?”

“Demi-titans have to make a living somehow, Granduncle.”

“Is that the letter from Hera?”

The pair turn, seeing Tethys glide into the foyer in a flutter of ocean blue silk and long, silver hair. Her bright cerulean eyes light upon seeing them. 

“Oh, sargossa, welcome back,” Tethys says, floating gently up to her husband’s side. She links their arms together with a whisper of current, head tipping onto his shoulder as she holds out a hand to the girl.

“Nice to see you two again.” Ria grasps her much larger hand, vines of gold and deep blue light swirling down her wrist to twine around Tethys’. 

The Titaness murmurs a little coo. She releases Ria’s hand to gesture to the doorway she entered from, saying, “Will you be staying? I will have the guest rooms prepared before dinner.”

She gives the Titaness a sheepish smile, hand reaching down to pat the sturdy leather of her messenger bag. “I can’t this time, sorry. Hebe put a rush order out on these perfumes I’m carrying, and their destination is on the other side of the continent, so I’m already going to have to do a few fly-by-nights to make it as it is.”

“Impudent girl,” Tethys says, lips pursing. “Never matter. I will make mention in our reply letter to Hera - certainly she will sort her daughter out.” She settles her other hand on her husband’s bicep, stepping into him so that their sides press together, united. “Surely you must stay for dinner. You have traveled so far for only a parcel. And the sea beasts are more aggressive after dark, are they not, dear?”

“They are indeed,” he says, his dark green eyes shadowed.

“It’s fine, really.” She shakes her head, arms crossing. “I have other orders besides that. There’s Ares’ gun oil, Ariadne commissioned a new bobbit for her sewing machine from Hephaestus, Hermes _somehow_ wants me to get a book from Athena’s western library to Thoth in one piece, and I-”

“We insist, sweetling,” Tethys says, tender yet firm. Her smile is dimmer this time, with something small and a bit melancholy to it. “It has been too long since we have had proper guests. Will you humor an old, lonely couple at the bottom of the sea for a night?”

Ria takes a step back, polite smile wavering on her lips. Her hazel eyes flicker back to the doors over her shoulder, her hand clutched so tightly over her bag strap now that her knuckles are a pale white. 

When she looks back to the couple, her lips are set in a thin, trembling smile. “I’m sorry ... I just can’t.”

Both Titans frown, the water around them cooling a few degrees.

Oceanus shifts, sliding his hand up to take hold of Tethys’ and weave their fingers together. He gives the back of her hand a soft kiss, parting, before kneeling down in front of the young demi-titan. Voice low and careful, he asks, “Have we troubled you, child?”

“No. No, _I’m_ sorry.” She won’t look at him, _can’t_ look at him, studying the sword at his hip and the glimmer of his lady’s gown, the rainbow refraction of the sealight dancing across their foyer floor. “It’s not that I don’t want to, I swear, I _do_ want to. I want to so much-”

“Yet you refuse,” Tethys says. There is no accusation in her voice; only a gentle sort of encouragement.

She’s retreating towards the door now, body curled around her bag protectively. “I appreciate it, really, I always do. I always _want_ to, it’s just-”

Her eyes lock onto his; wide, shiny hazel meeting deep, swaying green. The breath catches in her chest, her shoulders tensing, as if she’s been struck. She glances up to his wife, meeting the Titaness’s soft blue stare, and then back to his as the light shimmers a low, roiling navy blue over her shoulders. Neither immortal has made a move to stop her retreat; just standing, silent, in the middle of their very grand (very quiet, very _empty_ ) foyer, watching her go. And it ... it-

She drops her gaze to the polished tile at her feet. In a whisper so quiet it’s nearly lost to the currents, she says, “I’m not supposed to.”

“To do what, sargossa?” Tethys asks, sadly.

The girl winces, hands releasing her bag to hang loose at her sides. “To stay, here.” She glances up at Oceanus first, and then, shyly, over to her grandaunt. “Not for too long.”

The kingly couple exchange glances with one another, a silent converse that speaks to just how much connection and understanding thousands of years of loving matrimony can build. 

Oceanus tips his head and looks back to the young demi-titan, his frown so deep that she can see the age lines weathered into his face. “Have you been ordered to do so, young one?”

Her expression closes off at the word “ordered,” and she steps back from him again, shaking her head. “It’s not .... It’s just not a good idea right now, y’know? And I understand that, really. With everything that’s been going on, Atlas and the Labyrinth and all those demigods and demi-titans defecting to who-knows-where, he’s just trying-”

“He who?” Tethys asks, coming up to her kneeling husband. She places a hand on his shoulder, fingers curling lightly around the white cotton of his shirt.

Ria bites her lip, shooting another anxious look between the two Titans. 

“Our nephew?” Tethys asks, eyes growing darker. “Is it Zeus that has ordered you away from your own kin?”

“No, it wasn’t-” She reaches down to her bag again, fiddling with the worn, brass buckle on the flap. “It’s Hermes - It was my boss. He just wants me to stay out of it, that’s all. Keep my head down until this all blows over.” 

She looks up at them then, wearing a little simper of a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I mean, that’s what we do, right? The Titans who are left, like you guys. We stay out of it.” She shifts on her feet, adjusting the strap over her shoulder. “Which is what I told _him_ , by the way, but he still doesn’t want me staying here for longer than the delivery takes. As if you guys would ever actually get involved with all of that stuff.”

Another look exchanged, with Oceanus standing this time to meet his wife’s gaze evenly. His hand falls to the bronze hilt of the sword sheathed at his hip, her arms crossing delicately over her chest. The whole exchange only takes a moment, but the tension that falls when they look back to her, eyes dark and uncertain, sends a rush of cold shuddering through her.

The breath catches in her lungs, gasping and too short. “No.”

Tethys takes a step towards her, reaching out. “Sargossa-”

“So you - you’ll be fighting for the-” The words catch on the tip of her tongue, stuck there as a another fresh chill sweeps through her. She doesn’t want to finish that sentence; doesn’t know which way is worse.

Does she actually _want_ them to fight for the Olympians, turning blades against their own family ( _her_ family) for the sake of duty and alliance, in the name of Zeus? But does she want them fighting for the Titans, leading armies of her friends and family into an unwinnable bloodbath, just so she can watch them _all_ be cast down into Tartarus this time? No, gods no, she doesn’t want either, ever, _ever_. It doesn’t matter who they want to fight for, they shouldn’t be fighting in the first place, they-

“You were neutral last time,” she says, voice trembling. “You didn’t pick a side, and the Titans fell, the Elders were thrown into Tartarus, you’re _here_. Why are you deciding to take sides now, after all this time?”

“Put simply-” Oceanus stares down at her, gaze a dark, stoic green. “-during the First War, it was not apparent to us who would be the more just ruler; Kronos or Zeus. We had not fully forgiven our brother for his callous slaying of our Lord Father, nor we were enamored of the grim ambitions of Rhea’s plucky, young boyking.”

Ria’s mind short-circuits at the idea of anyone, even those as old as the Elder Titans, referring to the ruler of Olympus as a “plucky, young boyking.”

“In the end,” Tethys says, taking her husband’s hand again. They hold onto each other with gentle care, looking down at her now as one. “It made no difference to us who won the war. And so, we did not fight.”

“Alright.” Brows furrowed, she swaps her gaze between the two Titans, saying, “Alright, fine, I get that. But why are you choosing to fight _now_? Nothing has changed!”

“Everything has changed, little one,” Oceanus says, something dark touching his eyes. She sees his fingers curling tightly around Tethys’, and hers closed around his in turn. “Our people now live and die in squalor, in subjugation. Demi-titans around the world, young children, the blood of our blood - sleeping on floors and in alleys, thrown to the monsters as swift-kilt fodder, called _betrayers_ by those they have fought alongside for centuries.”

Consoling, yet cool, Tethys says, “You helped us to see this, Ria. With your tales of the young titanlings you have helped, fighting and toiling for their lives in the dank of the cities. Culled by the dozens on their desperate journeys to sanctuary, where they are received as outcasts, second-class and unworthy.”

“Our people are hated,” Oceanus says. A new gust of current brushes past her, glacial fingers dancing against her skin, and she shivers. “It is apparent now that they always will be, so long as a god remains king. For the sake of our race and kin, for pity of their children cast in strife around the world, we can see only one remedy.”

She shakes her head, tears finally spilling over out of her hazel eyes - instantly lost to salty shimmer of the ocean.

“A Titan must take the throne once more.”


End file.
